Textbooks have never been my favorite thing, but today I became extremely disenchanted with them. I read the first chapter in my Child Development textbook, in which the history of the study was recounted. The author attempts to summarize several philosophers' views in the space of a couple pages. Ok, well that's the nature of a textbook. Anyway, these philosophers are ones of whom I have actually read a decent amount (Plato, Locke and Rousseau). And this textbook either gave, for each philosopher, an extremely simplistic view of what they said, or just plain got it wrong. (I should mention that Darwin and Stanley Hall are also discussed briefly, but as I have not read either of them, I don't really know if the textbook got them right or not).

The book claims, for example, that Rousseau believed that children are born naturally good. Ok, that's fine. But it goes on to say, "The role of adults, in Rousseau's view, is to let the natural positive forces in children emerge without restraint." Woah. I've read Emile. And that is not what Rousseau says. On the contrary, he would have parents/guardians very carefully and intricately regulate the experiences that the child has, so that they will come to learn exactly what the adult desires them to learn. It's to such an extreme that I really don't know how anyone could write in a textbook that he says something so different.

Then, this afternoon, I was talking about the chapter with Jonathan. I mentioned that the book says that in the Middle Ages, there wasn't much of a distinction between children and adults; they were just seen as miniature adults. He pointed out what a wrong idea of the Medievals this is.

So, pretty much, I don't want to read this textbook anymore.

All that got me thinking about why we have textbooks anyway. They're certainly not the best way to acquire knowledge. If I want to know what Plato, Locke and Rousseau think, I should read them...not this textbook. But that would take a lot more time. So, I suppose textbooks are used because they can fit a lot of basic, summarized information into a small space. The problem is, these textbook authors have a bias, so everything comes across with a twist.

I guess all this is the cost of majoring in Liberal Studies. I'll end up knowing a little about everything and, consequently, won't have a really strong grasp of any one thing.

When I'm a teacher, I'm going to try to use textbooks as little as possible. And when they must be used, they will not be regarded as the final authority. I would have said the same thing a week ago; but today, I mean it more.